Max Scherzer Forgot To Change Anything

Max Scherzer had his best season to date in 2013. After it was over, my basic message about Scherzer was that he will continue to be good but he had simply reached his peak and his career year was already behind him. In a way, I was sort of right. In another way, I was totally wrong. You see, Max Scherzer didn’t get better this year but he also didn’t get worse. Max Scherzer is exactly the same pitcher he was last year to the point where it is actually a little bit weird.

Let’s run through the numbers a little bit:

Season

GS

IP

2013

32

214.1

2014

25

169

Technically, he’s getting one extra out per game, averaging 6.2 innings in 2013 and 7 in 2014. Oh well, look at this! Just look at it!

Season

K%

BB%

HR/9

2013

28.7 %

6.7 %

0.76

2014

28.7 %

6.7 %

0.75

What? Like serious, Max what the hell? Are you a robot?

At least his BABIP is way different, which means we’re probably going to see a big swing in ERA.

Season

BABIP

ERA

FIP

xFIP

RA9

2013

0.259

2.90

2.74

3.16

3.07

2014

0.312

2.98

2.76

3.01

2.98

Oh.

Going into the season, we were planning on getting a little less from Scherzer in 2014 simply due to normal regression, but Max, ever the intellectual, completely avoided what was supposed to happen. If you know baseball well enough, you know that this is completely ridiculous. Even if he was exactly the same pitcher, you couldn’t have had identical results like this if you tried.

Max is very good and did a nice job staying on top of his game, but what you’re seeing him do this year is one in a million.